


we all fall down

by irritable



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, ok ya technically major character death BUT this is an edge of tomorrow au, so shes supposed to die a million times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 04:35:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14887751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irritable/pseuds/irritable
Summary: Nadine—who goes by Ross to everyone, everywhere, except in Chloe’s head—never makes it past the cabin and she can’t live in a world where there isn’t a frowning Nadine Ross schooling her on the animal kingdom.(edge of tomorrow au)





	we all fall down

**Author's Note:**

> hey 100% should watch the movie before reading this. at least watch it for the scene where emily blunt does a push up like......... Quality
> 
> title: lost&found by jorja smith

 

It’s a Tuesday afternoon in India when the end of the world crash-lands smack in the middle of Europe.

Chloe doesn’t actually hear about it until the next day. She’d spent Tuesday trudging through the Ghats, and then the night and a good portion of the next morning were wasted on rolling around in her sheets with a stranger named Vaibhav.

She's just putting her cereal bowl in the sink and turning back to her bedroom, ready for a round two, when he comes barreling down the hall. One of his legs is stuffed in his jeans and he's hopping while he waves his phone furiously in her face, rapid-fire Tamil falling out of his mouth.

Aliens. In Germany. 

 

* * *

 

The world assembles the United Defense Force and proceeds to throw it repeatedly, and uselessly, at the aliens—they’re these ugly things with spasming tentacles, like molten metal whips attached to a central glob, glowing orange from the inside.

She doesn't join up, despite all the propaganda posters pasted onto every large, flat surface possible preaching about nobility. Well, she _does_ , having been drafted and all, but not in the way that people used to think she did when she'd come home in full uniform. (It only takes a week before they realize that if she had _really_  joined up, they wouldn’t have seen her again after she’d first walked out, cap in hand.)

Instead, she spends her time in the safety of news studios, doing press for the UDF. She's young enough, good looking, and can smooth talk a wall into crumbling for her, so naturally, they had her in PR.

Nate calls her four months after the invasion when she’s in California for the first time, and she agrees to meet.

After a quick house tour (and, of course, he's shacked up in a beach house), he drives them to a dingy café by the ocean. They sit outside, watching the waves roll in and enjoying the breeze.

He looks too old for someone barely past 35, but she supposes that’s what an alien invasion does to a person.

"I fly out tomorrow," he says, almost inaudibly, like if no one hears him, it won't actually be true. "Elena's sending Cassie off to her parents' house. She'll join me in Heathrow in a week."

Chloe, who is otherwise very secure and happy in her position in PR, suddenly feels a weird mixture of sorrow and guilt in the pit of her stomach. She is, after all, going to be lounging in press rooms while her best friends go off to fight, wearing the same uniform as her.

Nate smiles. It’s one of those small tilts that are glaringly hollow he gets when he's trying to be brave and heroic. “I’m glad you’re not fighting.”

“I’m sorry,” she finds herself saying.

“Don’t be. You’re safe.” He finishes his drink, so she nudges her glass across the table. “We both got drafted and just didn’t want Cassie to grow up with those alien pieces of shit still around.”

The international policy on compulsory military service was unified two months after the Mimics landed: anyone over 18 and under 60 would have to join the war effort, whether it be secretarial work or on the frontlines with an AK-47.

He sighs, wiping a hand down his face and scratching his jaw where he's grown a bit of a scruff. "If we don't make it—"

“You will.”

Nate shakes his head immediately, says, " _No, Chloe_ ," and covers her hand with his. Warm and calloused and familiar. (And, fuck, if she cries, she'll kill him before the aliens can.)

"Nate..."

"If we don't make it, just look out for Cassie, okay?" She opens her mouth but stops when he swallows her glass of beer in two large gulps. He levels her with a heavy look. "Okay?"

"Yeah, okay." She jerks her head into a nod. "Of course."

“Good.” He smiles, genuinely this time. “Now, how about another round?”

 

* * *

 

They’re called Mimics. She doesn’t know why, but she doesn’t ask either. 

Fourteen months after they land, the UDF _finally_ wins a battle and it's with the help of the new jacket technology in Verdun, France.

The UDF has been toting pictures of their prized Angel of Verdun around, trying to convince more people to enlist. That’s where she comes in.

She has nothing to do with the victory in Verdun, but she’s been doing press on it for weeks now. She can promote those exoskeleton death machines on the drop of a hat, can never be rid of Sergeant Nadine Ross’s glaring face on the propaganda posters.

The Angel of Verdun: victor, laying waste to the Mimic army with her giant, blood-spattered blade and exoskeleton suit, painted red over the cage on her chest to make her seem _that_ much more menacing.

She’s supposed to look fierce, but every time Chloe looks up, she feels this uncomfortable sense of disapproval.

Nate hasn’t contacted her since he left.

Still, she’s safe. That’s all that matters.

That’s why when General Flynn, the smarmy bastard who looks at her arse too often to be professional, suggests she does press on the frontlines, she almost loses it.

“It’ll be in France. You like France, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure, when it isn’t, y'know, infested with genocidal aliens! When I won’t _die_ from just breathing in the wrong spot!”

Flynn snorts, waving. “It’ll be a massive assault, you’ll be covered by a squadron on all sides and you can use the cameramen as body shields if worst comes to worst.”

“That’s really inspiring, mate,” she snaps, cap almost flattened under her arm. “Thanks.”

Appearing to run out of patience, he puts his pen and paper down on his desk and stands to his full height. “This is an order, actually. I only asked to be polite.”

“No niceties in war, huh. You have no authority to command I do anything.”

“Actually,” he starts, smiling like someone does when they know they’re about to shit on someone else’s day and is relishing in the power. Then, he does. He shits on her day thoroughly and spectacularly.

And she, who prides herself on knowing when to walk away, stands her ground this  _one_ time and walks out too confidently to not look like an idiot because of what happens next.

Flynn, the dismissive asshole that he is, lets her have three paces out the door before he orders her arrest. She’s hit the ground running before the words have properly left his mouth, but she’s in the middle of the Ministry of Defense, the headquarters of the British army, and they have her head against cold marble before she even makes it to the stairs.

For her troubles, she’s given a purpling bruise on her temple, cuffs around her wrists, and falsified papers declaring her status as a low ranking private.

 

* * *

  

It might be some cosmic karma coming for her because she wakes to an incessant marching and yelling and a stinging on her face that’s tender to touch.

A bus decorated by a heroic looking portrait of Sergeant Ross zooms by; there’s a piece of steel the shape of a window pane slung over her shoulder and the words  _FULL METAL BITCH_  painted in red next to the harsh cut of her face.

She looks away, dazed, and squints at the buildings.

Heathrow, she realizes, blinking the haze out of her eyes.

A red-faced American in uniform—a Master Sergeant—humours her panicked babbling as he prods her forwards. No one listens to her, not when she’s shaking her cuffs at them or when she’s desperately trying to climb out of the exoskeleton they force her into. She tries to ask for Nate or Elena, but either he doesn’t recognize their names or, more likely, no one cares to listen to a deserter, let alone the Master Sergeant.

Before this whole mess, she had worked with all kinds of guns and was fairly confident in her hand-to-hand combat skills, but this exoskeleton business is truly something else.

It looks like a pile of machine guns and semiautomatics taped together to look vaguely humanoid, and she’s shoved into the barrel as a trigger who doesn’t even know how to pull itself.

On the beach, sky glaring grey and ugly, the Mimics ambush them. Their invasion of France is a perfectly placed trap, and she’s been flung into it by some spiteful asshole.

What was supposed to be a quick, clean slice, another tentacle off the Mimic army, turns out to be utter carnage. In the first minute, Carver is crushed by a falling helicopter and the world turns into a demented landscape painting: a strip of brown sand and another of storming skies, dotted with dark bodies and smoky explosions.

Chloe finally stumbles forward, a roaring in her ears.

Her helmet’s done, cracked down the middle, so she tosses it away.

Despite the cacophony of suspicious whirring noises and its clunky design, the suit moves relatively smoothly with her movements.

She makes it a good five meters inland before she sees a Mimic with her own two eyes for the first time in her life.

Soldiers yell at each other, flashing white as all their guns start firing at once. It’s down before it even reaches her, but she still trips onto her arse in shock.

They are masses of distorted, swirling tendrils that move in tandem, sort of like a snake with many, many tails.

She’s still down when the squadron is faced with three more Mimics. One of them, the biggest, glows an eerie blue.

This is the first time she dies.

She will never forget the tight ball of panic in her chest as she set the bomb off, the Mimic on top of her raining down in thick chunks. Most of all, she will never forget the scorching of the Mimics thick flesh melting into her own.

Sizzling away into the sand, she did not feel peace, nor did she see her life flash before her eyes. Only felt a stifling amount of dread choking her out, saw a blinding nothingness.

 

* * *

 

She wakes up again, inhaling so much and so hard, her throat hurts.

 

* * *

 

After she tries every possible way to get someone to believe her about the beach, the ambush, and after realizing no one ever will, she gets better at speeding through the introductions, so people would just leave her alone.

No matter what she does, however, Cutter will always make the same tasteless joke about her suit and they will always fall on that dreary beach.

At least she knows how to turn off the safety on her suit now.

 

* * *

                                                

She meets her after the fifteenth death.

Sergeant Nadine Ross in the flesh, dirt and blood streaking down her cheek, the hallmark Angel of Verdun blade gripped so hard, Chloe’s half-convinced it is part of her body.

The first time their eyes meet is also the first time Chloe watches her die.

One minute she’s towering there, steady in the midst of an ongoing war, only a silhouette forged from the wreckage of a burning dropship, and the next she’s engulfed in flames. Gone before she even lifts that impressive blade.

She looked like an angel for that fleeting moment. A really fucked up angel with a penchant for violence, but still.

Chloe dies a few seconds later anyway.

 

* * *

  

The Full Metal Bitch cannot die so quickly,  _should_  not, at least.

If she does, then what are the chances Chloe's going to make it out?

She’s managed to save Cutter and Sam from dying for about ten resets in a row now. She hopes she can do the same for Ross.

She’s no saint, having made a career out of stealing from people (though she does like to point out: they either deserved it or were dead already), and then after that, turning innocent people into lambs, primed for a slaughter. But if she has the power to help people  _not_  die, then she’s going to do it.

So she sprints as fast as she can, barreling into Ross seconds before the dropship explodes as she shrieks a guttural, “ _Incoming!_ ” as loudly as she can.

They land with a grunt, suits clanging against each other. She thinks she might be bruised from the impact.

“Oh, fuck,” she groans, rolling onto her back.

She only opens her eyes again when she feels a gentle weight on her chest.

Ross stands over her, unsmiling, eyes dark through the sooty haze.

“You’ve got a hole in your chest.”

Chloe gapes, phantom pain wrenching at her lungs.

Her hands fly to her middle, feeling for blood. She only finds Ross’s hand drawing away, something rectangular in her hand.

“What?” she manages through her astonishment.

It seems Ross lives up to all her nicknames. She smirks, tucking it away. “Thanks for the spare battery pack.”

A meter away, the sand dissolves into a sinkhole, a Mimic tendril whipping out.

“Oh, you bi—”

 

* * *

 

Chloe still tries.

No one has been particularly pleasant to her since she got there, but she won’t just let them all die because of it. Not that anyone has left her to die so blatantly the way Ross did. She’s the goddamn Angel of Verdun, though. Chloe reckons she didn’t get to her position by being warm and friendly.

She finds Ross again, this time faster than before.

She’s done this three times now, getting farther with every new attempt. Her movements are smooth, almost mechanical, as she dodges and ducks before she could possibly know anything would happen.

In the end, she gets Ross away from the dropship  _and_  manages to keep her battery afterwards. They still die, but this time, Ross is staring at her.

Blood sputters out of her mouth and she spits it out, fingers grappling at the metal chest of Chloe’s suit. Her knuckles blanch, nails clawing. “Find me. When you wake up, _find me_.”

 

* * *

  

Full Metal Bitch.

Again, on the side of the bus.

She doesn’t look disappointed anymore. Chloe thinks she looks only vaguely threatening and more than a bit exhausted in the picture.

The first time she tried to find Ross, she’d been run over by a truck, so she times herself better this time.

Dying via truck is, in some ways, worse than dying on the beach. Everyone sees how undignified she is, firstly, and also it’s messy. On the bright side, she died and no one remembers it because for them there’s nothing to remember.

She wanders around Heathrow, peeking into hangars until she spots a suit with a chest piece slashed in red and figures she’s in the right place.

Chloe manages to sleuth past the spinning fake Mimics in the training hall, coming to a stop in front of Ross.

In person, without the suit, Ross is all unrestrained muscle and startling fury. At the moment, Chloe can only spot the former. The anger’s there, yes, but it’s hidden in the way Ross flexes her hands imperceptibly and in the perpetual scowl she has on.

“Sergeant Ross?” she starts, off-kilter.

Ross pushes herself to her feet, arms glistening with a sheen of sweat. Chloe blinks, swallows, and reminds herself: there is a time and place, and this is definitely not it. 

“Yes,” Ross says, impatient. “Who said you could talk to me?”

Chloe blinks hard. “You, uh…”

“I got something on my face?”

“You told me to find you.” She winces. “Well, you _will_ tell me to find you. Tomorrow, on the beach.”

Ross takes a few seconds to process this and then seizes Chloe by the arm, tugging her out of the hangar and through the base without slowing out of courtesy. Chloe is certain her arm will bruise. She’s getting a bit tired of them.

“Don’t talk to anyone except me about this.”

“Why?” she huffs out, trying again to wriggle out of Ross’s grip, to no avail.

Ross rolls her eyes, releasing Chloe as she continues on at a brisk pace towards another building. "Best case scenario, you end up in the psych ward. The worst case, you're buried in pieces after being prodded and dissected for study. Are we clear?"

“As day, love,” she mutters under her breath.

“Are we clear?” Ross asks again, biting.

“ _Yes_.”

She meets Sully, who is much kinder than Ross, but then again, he isn’t hardened by literally saving the world every day. He’s got an old charm that warms her to him immediately; everything from his grey moustache to his nicely combed hair to the lingering smell of cigars.

Even Ross relaxes in his presence, albeit only marginally.

She’s still all business when she locks the door behind them, leaning back against it. “Tell us about the first time you died.”

“The wh—” Ross cuts Sully off with a rather frosty glare.

“Well, I killed one of those things with this…” She gestures at the harmless looking grey rectangle flung across the table with the rest of what must be Ross’s stuff. “Thing.”

“A Claymore mine.”

“Right.” She nods at Ross and clears her throat. “The Mimic was bigger than the other ones. And blue.”

“And you got covered in it, yes,” she turns to Sully, “She’s me before Verdun.”

At that, Chloe starts. “Wait, wait. You can do it too?”

“ _Could_. Keep up, private.”

“Or how about you stop being such a dickhead and tell me what the bloody hell is happening?”

Sully’s eyebrows jerk up at that, but he doesn’t say anything.

Ross, on the other hand, looks entirely unamused. “I killed an Alpha and got what you have, and I lost it. The end, no time for the play by play.”

Indignant at the brusqueness of her tone, Chloe crosses her arms over her chest and glowers. “Looks to me like I’ve got all the time in the world, so why don’t you try.”

“ _Christ_ ,” Nadine scoffs.

Sully holds a hand up, stopping her before she can tear Chloe a new one. “An Alpha is the type of Mimic you killed. Big, bad 'n blue. All the Mimics are controlled by an Omega, like a brain, while the Alphas regulate the other Mimics. It's a hierarchy: the head of the operation, enforcers, and the foot soldiers. If an Alpha dies, the Omega has the ability to reset the day. This got transferred to you when you killed the Alpha.”

“If you don’t die, you don’t get reset, and you get sent to the hospital. A blood transfusion will get rid of the reset. It’s all about the blood.” Ross steps dangerously closer. “But you won’t be getting a blood transfusion without helping me first.”

Chloe raises her eyebrows. “I’ll bite. Help you with what?”

“Ending the war.”

 

* * *

  

Chloe is not weak by any measure.

She’s not fragile or untouched by the harsher elements, but the training Ross subjects her to makes her think otherwise.

As a treasure hunter, she often had to dodge bullets and defy death by high fall with only a few scrapes to show for it. She’d thought that was pretty hardcore already. Ross, as always, proves her wrong; the training hall is a whole other ballpark.

The first time she’s in there, she lasts two seconds before she’s swept up and flung into a wall, breaking her cheekbone.

Ross thumbs a button and the spinning stops. She strides across the hall purposefully and crouches down.

“Did you break anything?”

Chloe lets out a pathetic sounding whimper, trying to form words through the pain.

Ross sighs like she's the who has been incredibly inconvenienced between the two of them, then stands and promptly puts a bullet in her head.

 

* * *

  

Getting shot in the head so many times is probably not good for her in the long run, psychologically speaking.

It doesn’t stop Ross from forcing a reset every time she’s injured, be it a slice in her arm or a broken spine and a ruptured lung, which happened once. Time’s like those, she’s okay with being put out of her own misery.

 

* * *

  

One of the most frustrating things about this is that she doesn't gain new muscle, it's all in her head. Not even the luxury of muscle memory is afforded to her.

The tight strips of meat wound around her bones are used to ducking, climbing, and darting out of sight, not brawling it out with 5 giant metal flays that spin in the air and try to break all her bones.

And break they do.

Just one  _bang!_  and she’s done.

 

* * *

  

She gets better, though.

She learns. Soon enough, she knows her way around her suit like the it's the back of her hand and knows how to move in it so she’s more efficient, more ruthless.

The first time she blasts them all down, Ross’s lips twitch into the beginnings of a smile.

Then, she breaks her femur on the beach and she has to start all over again.

 

* * *

  

“Jesus, not  _again_ ,” she huffs, crawling away from a fast-approaching Ross with both her legs dragging uselessly behind her.

Her boots come into view, stopping Chloe short.

Chloe sighs. “I always forget it comes from the right.”

“I’m training your ability to kill Mimics, not your memory,” Ross says, flatly. “How many times before?”

She flops onto her back and tries to find Ross’s features, ebbed away by the harsh overhead lights.

“Breaking my legs? Four, including this time.”

Ross clicks her tongue and takes the gun out of her holster.

“Wait,” Chloe barks, hands shielding her face out of instinct.

“What?” Ross stoops closer, her scathing scowl coming into view.

Chloe licks her lips, chapped and bleeding. The bruise on her face stings. “Okay, now.”

She pulls the trigger.

 

* * *

 

It’s been a whole year of the same day. She lost count a couple times, but she’s sure it’s been at least 360 days.

She doesn’t feel like being shot in the head today, so she avoids Ross entirely and ducks away on a pee break, managing to get all the way to a bar in London using a stolen bike and someone else’s uniform. There are people inside, but she’s not looking for a conversation, so she keeps going.

The streets are empty and doors are left ajar, houses cleared of anything worth more than a dime.

She stops outside a convenience store, still open despite the evacuation a year ago—an actual year ago, playing by the normal rules of physics. Inside, a bored teenager flips through a magazine. There’s a flask by the register, but she doesn’t say anything about it.

There’s one pack of Marlboros left, and the brand of beer she likes sits in groups of six on the bottom shelf, untouched.

It’s only after she gets to the register with her cigarettes and beer that she realizes she doesn’t know if she has any cash on her.

The teenager, Meenu according to her name tag, stands when she notices Chloe at the counter.

“Uh, hi.” Meenu glances down at her magazine. The cover has a picture of Chloe on it, teeth glowing white and eyes crinkled at the corners. “You’re Major Frazer.”

She hasn’t heard that one in a while.  _Her_  kind of a while, because otherwise, it would’ve been just yesterday when she was a Major doing press in exchange for physical safety.

She smiles, mirroring the one she has on the cover. “That’s me.”

“Oh, um, wow, free of charge, ma’am.” She’s scrawny, but she looks so earnest, Chloe ends up digging around in her pockets for spare change anyway.

“Thanks.” She tips her cap for good measure. “How come you and your family haven’t evacuated yet?”

“Oh, we will. We’re leaving tomorrow. My dad’s been discharged.”

Chloe nods, slipping a cigarette from the box.

“Stay safe then.” Meenu offers her a light and she accepts. “Cheers.”

There are posters and billboards still up. Ross, the modern-day Rosie the Riveter that she is, watches over the deserted streets; a starved hawk for prey.

She takes a drag instead of scoffing at the pictures of her own face, glued in a neat line across the middle of Ross’s face on a nearby wall.

Meenu keeps staring at her through the glass, so she hops back onto her bike, beer huddled between her thighs, and stops on a bridge overlooking the Thames.

There’s a classic red payphone at the end of the road which she ducks into.

Chloe, who’s been only addressed as  _Private Frazer_  or other variations of her surname for the past year, calls home and almost weeps when she’s finally called by her first name. Australia’s been relatively untouched, so she hadn’t worried too much about her mum this whole time.

It’s nice, talking to a friendly voice.

She sucks in another drag and cracks open a beer with one hand, payphone wedged between her head and shoulder.

“You’re safe?”

“Yeah, mum,” Chloe says, quietly. “You?”

“They haven’t reached Antarctica or Asia yet, love, let alone Australia,” her mum says, good-natured as she has always been.

Chloe blows out a breath. “I’m glad.”

“Are you all right?”

“I said—”

“No, I mean, you sound tired.” There’s a rustle. Chloe imagines her mum pressing the landline closer to her ear, sitting on her old leather couch with all the throw pillows and the ratty quilt. “You should get a vacation day and come home. I’m worried about you.”

She crumples and drops the empty can onto the ground, leaning against the side of the phone box.

“I’m fine.” A vacation seems so far away, so out of the realms of possibility for her. She lets out a shaky breath. “Really. I’m fine. I’ll visit as soon as I can, okay?”

“Well, you better.”

Before she can say anything else, the line crackles and cuts out.

The ground is rumbling.

She’s through her second beer when she goes out onto the bridge and sees the disruptions in the current. Of course.

There’s no such thing as a break in war.

A Mimic flings itself onto the bridge, hurtling at Chloe who only drops her cigarette and crushes it under her boot, waiting for a reset.

Chloe wishes ardently for just  _one_  day back home with her mum.

 

* * *

 

She gets her first vision after that: the Omega, a dam, Germany.

 

* * *

  

“Oi!”

She glances up at Cutter, head jerking to the side when the dropship shudders in the air.

“I think there’s something wrong with your suit.” He snickers, proud of himself for something she has heard a thousand times. “There’s a dead body in it!”

 

* * *

  

They never get off the beach. They always die before they make it out of the crater.

Ross dies in front of her so many times, Chloe sometimes has trouble looking her in the eye without wanting to grab her face just to make sure that she’s okay, that she’s alive. Just to make sure.

 

* * *

  

After the thousandth reset, Chloe learns how to avoid all the introductions at the beginning altogether. The trick is to roll off and sink into the crowd before anyone bothers to check if she’s alive.

She ends up in the training hall before Ross gets there and climbs into a suit with too much grace and speed for someone who’s supposedly doing it for the first time.

Ross eventually cuts her training short, looking unruffled as ever even though there’s a strange woman taking up her usual training space. Chloe comes to enjoy their first meetings, enjoys saying new things to see what reaction she can prompt out of her.

One time, she works up a sweat and shamelessly whips her shirt over her head when she hears the steady rhythm of Ross’s boots coming in. That’s the only time Ross hesitates before she starts crawling up Chloe’s ass about wasting her designated training time.

That time, as Chloe lies bleeding out on the beach, Ross bends over her with the gun pointed at her. Chloe really hates that thing.

“Next time, keep your shirt on.”

Chloe smirks. “You liked it.”

Ross looks like she’s smiling too, but she stands up too quickly for Chloe to tell definitively.

Then, she’s reset, but she doesn’t stop thinking about it after.

 

* * *

   

Once, a Mimic actually leaves a hole in her chest. She’s too delirious to feel it properly.

When Ross skids down the hill, her eyes squinting down at her, Chloe can’t help but laugh.

Ross looks taken aback for a moment but has to jerk back to avoid a Mimic that comes hurtling by. She cleaves it down with on smooth arc of her blade, clenched teeth dark with her own blood.

When it’s dead, she goes back to Chloe, who’s still giggling uncontrollably, and shakes her head as she pulls her trigger.

 

* * *

  

She wakes up.

They die.

Rinse, wash, repeat.

 

* * *

  

She doesn’t take any more breaks after the first one. If she ends the war, she can get that damn vacation and fly home. Until then, she can only fight.

And she does.

She dies countless times. So far, she puts being crushed, impaled, and left to bleed out by her own suit down as the worst way to go. Burning is next, then electrocution. (She insists on using a different suit after that one time it malfunctioned and she died before she even met up with Ross on the beach.)

Eventually, they get off the beach.

She resets six times before they find the only van left in the lot that works.

After that, she has to try ten more times to get Ross, stubborn as an ox, to let her drive. She never survives if she drives. Ross slumped in her seat, blood gushing down her brow, is a sight deeply unsettling, but she never voices this.

Finally, when she gets behind the wheel, they make progress and find the cabin. Chloe, at least, knows a thing or two about getaway driving.

 

* * *

  

There is a bruise on her face. She barely remembers a time when she  _didn’t_  have it, even though it was technically yesterday.

 

* * *

  

Ross looks sterner than she actually is, Chloe discovers.

There isn’t a lot of wildlife left in the area anymore, but there’s always a bird that flaps off the road when they come chugging along. Chloe only notices it after the third time and when she does, she finds herself leaning forwards to catch it soar away.

“I haven’t seen an Eagle that big in my life.”

Chloe’s surprised when Ross replies, dry, “You should get out more.”

She lets out a huffy laugh, still arched towards the windshield to get a better view of the bird. She’d say that as a treasure hunter, she gets out enough, thank you very much. 

“It stands a good 70 centimetres off the ground, that thing.”

“Bonelli's eagle.” When Chloe only looks at her blankly, she rolls her eyes and looks out the window. “The species. Their wingspan spreads over a meter wide.”

“I wonder what it’s still doing here.”

“They’re tough,” is all she says in response and they fall silent after that.

This is the first time Chloe has a conversation with Ross that isn’t about death or fatal injury or anything else that’s depressingly morbid, and she is delighted.

When she resets, triggered by a Mimic barreling out of the fields and flipping them into the fencing, she finds a renewed energy which she channels into the fight on the beach and getting into that van.

 

* * *

  

Ross lets her cradle her head sometimes. Though she doesn’t really say much when she dies, so it’s hard to tell what she thinks about it. 

Chloe chokes on the lump in her throat and the metallic thickness in her mouth, and bends over Nadine, shielding her from the violence a beat too late.

She never lasts long after Ross dies.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes she wishes the cabin by the road was destroyed in the original invasion. 

They talk on the way there and sometimes, if Chloe’s good and she manages to stretch their stay in the cabin to two nights, they talk then too.

No matter what she does, how much she delays it, the cabin will always kill them.

She likes to drive slowly now, to extend their conversations. Her excuse: driving fast attracts Mimics. Ross always buys it after a long, cursory examination of Chloe's face.

“I used to be a getaway driver for my friend, Nate,” she starts after they drive past the eagle.

Ross’s eyebrows furrow, creasing the skin on her forehead.

“We were treasure hunters,” she explains. “He retired a couple years before the invasion and settled down with his wife. They were drafted and joined up because they didn’t want their kid to grow up in this shit storm. She’s my goddaughter, actually.”

“Treasure hunters. You mean thieves.” Chloe turns to see her looking incredibly judgmental. “Eyes on the road, Frazer.”

“No, actually, I mean  _treasure hunters_. I made quite a name for myself, if I can say so, and then the aliens went and bollocksed it all up.” She sighs. “Anyway. I got drafted too, but not for any notion of heroism.”

Ross doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I’ve seen your posters.”

“Funny you say that because I’ve seen yours too.”

“Except I actually fight.”

Chloe barks a laugh. “What am I doing right now?”

When Ross doesn’t say anything, she slows the van and turns to look at her. Her eyebrows are still hiked up on her forehead, but this time, she looks faintly amused. She’s too hardheaded to vocally concede to Chloe’s point.

Chloe turns back to the road. “I’m just tired of walking away.”

A beat. Nadine makes a noise from the back of her throat that sounds vaguely like a scoff, shrugging nonchalantly. “Drive then.”

Sometimes, Ross says things like this with her features softened in a way that makes Chloe’s heart ache. It's so rare and Chloe cherishes these moments dearly. She will never tire of it.

She grins, gunning it. “Yes, ma’am.”

 

* * *

  

The cabin in the field would make a good setting for a horror movie, if people still made those and only if they made it to the night.

At night, it’s easier to convince Ross not to try the helicopter, so she stalls and stalls and stalls.

In the morning, Ross will always find the keys and she will always die.

 

* * *

  

Chloe grabs the keys first this time and she hurls it into the field before Ross comes out into the backyard. She faces the crops, examining the wheat like she's looking for something, with her back turned to Ross.

“We can take the helicopter to the Omega,” she suggests. Chloe mouths along to the words as she says them.

“I don’t think the keys are here.”

“Have we looked?”

Chloe pauses. If she says yes, Ross will insist they move on and she dies before they walk a kilometre. If she says no, they stay and at least Chloe can make their last few hours  _not_  terrible.

“No.”

So they stay. Chloe searches halfheartedly.

When night falls, she carries a can of baked beans and cream of mushroom soup from the kitchen to the barn where Ross is lying on a pile of hay. Her arm is thrown over her eyes, chest rising and falling with every breath.

“Hey,” she whispers, voice coming out raspy and low.

Ross sits up. Chloe wordlessly hands over the soup without asking which one she prefers.

”What’s the other one?” Ross asks, nodding to the can in Chloe’s hand.

She smiles, weakly. “Beans. You won’t like it.”

They eat in silence. The fire they have going crackles and licks the air.

When they’re done, Chloe stacks the cans where she always does, in the deep sink by the dusty car. Ross lies on her side, facing away from the fire, and tracks her movement.

“How many times have we been here?”

Chloe stays facing the sink. “At least fifty.”

“And we never find the keys.”

A pause. “We do.”

Ross always knows about it eventually, if Chloe lies. Whether it’s immediately after she’s said it or hours later, somehow, she always figures it out.

“Where did you put them?”

“I threw them away.” Now, she faces Ross. “You always die. No matter what I do or what  _you_  do, you end up dead. There’s a Mimic four houses over. After the first one comes, six more show up, and we  _always die_.”

She’s expecting to be reset, but Ross gets to her feet and closes the distance. “What were you before the invasion?”

Chloe stops, quizzical. Then, slowly: “A treasure hunter.” Nadine opens her mouth. Chloe beats her to it. “No,  _not_  a thief.”

“A good liar, at least.”

Chloe shrugs. “Perhaps.”

Ross stares at her, and she becomes hyperaware of the heat radiating from Ross’s body. She unzips her jacket, slinging it over the back of a nearby chair, and takes the gun from a concealed holster.

Her white Henley is stained red. Chloe hadn’t noticed that until now.

Finally, she flicks the safety off her gun and Chloe looks away, sick of staring down the barrel.

 

* * *

 

They almost escape once.

The cruellest part is the soul-crushing destruction of her hopes.

Ross leaps out of the helicopter before it explodes. She brought her blade this time. The last thing Chloe sees before a Mimic gets her is Ross bringing it down on a tentacle, sparks spitting out when she strikes it.

At least, she doesn’t witness her death this time. 

 

* * *

  

She has lived the day before the beach a thousand times, it’s hard not to blow up after hearing the same thing over and over again, but she manages to never lose her cool.

This time, she sticks to the Master Sergeant, meets J squadron, and joins them for PT like she did at the beginning before she found out how to find Ross without even meeting any of them.

Spending time with J squadron is a therapeutic experience. She manages to weasel her way into their hearts within thirty minutes in the mess hall and, by the end of the night, gambles away her boots and half her dinner during a rowdy game of Black Jack. She even joins Sam outside the bunker for a smoke.

She’s not actually a smoker, but she’s going to be reset soon anyway, so her body is incapable of being trapped in addiction.

“You married?”

Chloe laughs. “No, but this isn’t happening, buddy.”

Sam sticks his cigarette between his lips and glares at Chloe. “That’s not why I asked. Just wanted to know if you had anyone back home to fight for.”

“My mum.” She squints up at the lights on another building. “You?”

“My niece. Her name’s Cassie.”

“That’s the name of my goddaughter. Are you a Drake, by any chance?” she muses, mostly in jest for herself.

“Uh,” Sam says, slowly, looking like she'd punched him in the gut, “yeah?”

Chloe almost inhales the whole cigarette.

“Oh my  _god_ , I’m mates with Nate.” She grins. “That bastard never told me he had a brother!”

Sam winces, flicking ash into the air and pointedly avoiding eye contact. “That’s… not his fault entirely.”

“You can tell me that story over drinks later,” she says, “I just want to know if he’s okay. You in contact with him?”

He pulls a phone out of the pocket of his cargo shorts. “He calls sometimes. He got stationed in Berlin with Elena.”

She breathes a deep sigh of relief. “They’re okay.”

“Yeah,” he says, closing his eyes and blowing smoke from his nose. “They’re okay.”

 

* * *

 

Ross dies in the van. Chloe walks to the cabin, starts the helicopter without getting in, and waits for the Mimics to find her.

 

* * *

  

Turns out, Ross is always injured somewhere, somehow. Chloe uses this as an excuse to stay longer in the cabin.

It’s a relatively nice place, so she doesn’t see why Ross  _always_  insists on leaving so fast. Not like Chloe has deep, emotionally crippling abandonment issues or anything.

Ross always lets her look at the wound if it’s on her side or her back, and always inhales sharply when Chloe touches her skin.

Chloe knows the cabin like it’s her own house by now, so she always has Ross taken care of within the first ten minutes of her finally admitting to Chloe that she is, in fact, injured.

She has a deep wound sliced down her side this time.

Chloe lets her stay sitting as she stitches her back up, then nudges the soup closer and throws a patchy quilt over the hay. Ross likes sleeping in this specific spot. She doesn’t know why, but she thinks the fact is endearing, so she doesn’t bring it up in case Ross takes it the wrong way.

The cabin has a power generator and running water that can get lukewarm at best, so she hops into the shower and washes off all the grime while Ross literally hits the hay. She has the keys to the helicopter hidden under the pile because Ross is no princess and would never feel it or think to look there.

When she comes out, hair wrung as dry as she can get it, Ross is awake and finishing the last third of her cold soup.

She’s not wearing a shirt, so Chloe has an unrestricted view of the way her muscles flex and ripple under her skin as she gingerly gets to her feet. There’s a tattoo on one of her shoulder blades of some kind of isosceles triangle, filled in red at the top. Chloe eyeballs it for a good thirty seconds. If Ross notices, she doesn’t say anything.

“We should look for the keys.”

“It’s too dark and you’re going to pull your stitches, so let’s not.” Chloe kicks a pile of hay together for herself.

“Frazer.”

Chloe curls up, facing the fire. “Goodnight, Sergeant.”

For a moment, Chloe’s sure Ross is going to argue. Then, quietly: “Goodnight.”

In the morning, Chloe’s up first and she hops back into the shower, feeling itchy and disgusting from sleeping partially on hay and partially on the dirt.

There’s a box of stale cereal in the kitchen and she’s pouring two bowls when Ross trudges in. Her hair is wet and pulled back into a soppy, uncomfortable ponytail, and her skin looks clean of sweat, blood, and grime.

“Discovered the shower, I see,” she says, grinning. “Nice, isn’t it?”

Suddenly, Ross is taking large, confident steps up to Chloe and taking the bowls out of her hands.

She shoves Chloe up against the table and hefts her up effortlessly onto the surface by the back of her legs. She tongues at Chloe's neck, pants hot air against her collarbones. They don’t kiss, but Chloe wasn’t born yesterday and she knows the beginnings of a hookup when she sees one.

Still, she’s stunned.

“Sarge— _Nadine_.”

Immediately, she draws back. Which,  _no_. Chloe pulls her closer by her belt loops and works at the buckle of her pants.

Then, she pushes Chloe onto her back and has her coming twice before Chloe gets the good sense to return the favour. She fucks her with two fingers and a palm for friction, and when she gets Nadine on the table, her mouth.

At some point, Nadine's updo falls apart and frizzes of hair slip over her face, tickling Chloe’s neck where she’s scraping her teeth against her sternum.

Chloe fights the urge to slow down, to run her hands over the scars paved into Nadine’s skin, to treasure the moment. In the end, there’s nothing romantic about it, nothing gentle. Chloe’s never liked it that way but when she tries to soften her touches for Nadine's benefit, she's shot a heady, wildly disapproving look.

There’s a thick, silvery line of skin over the top of her chest. Chloe’s gotten peaks of it from the top of her Henley and her sports bra when they first meet, but never fully. She manages to get away with laying her head against Nadine’s sweaty clavicle and presses a kiss to the scar as she recovers from three of Nadine’s fingers.

Afterwards, she wordlessly leaves the kitchen, leaving her shirt hanging off her shoulder.

Chloe doesn’t complain.

She finds the keys a few hours later.

This time, Chloe limps to where Nadine’s struggling to breathe and falls to her knees and cries until the Mimics come back.

Nadine is long gone, hair still damp in her lap, when she resets.

 

* * *

  

She goes to Germany herself, carrying two spare batteries and as much ammo as she can tape to her suit.

Nadine—who goes by Ross to everyone, everywhere, except in Chloe’s head—will never make it past the cabin and she can’t live in a world where there isn’t a frowning Nadine Ross schooling her on the animal kingdom.

The dam smells like death, maybe mildew, but  _death_  seems like a fitting descriptor since this is where she finds out drowning is the worst way to die so far.

 

* * *

  

The Omega is decidedly not in Germany, so they’re back to square one.

She feels like someone gasping in air after being suffocated for so long when she realizes she never has to return to the rickety cabin and barn ever again.

However, being around a new Nadine, one who doesn’t know her in any way, shape, or form, is a whole different kind of torture.

She mentions they fucked once, just to see what happens, and the awkward silence that followed made Chloe desperate for a reset. Which she gets when she zones out during training, staring at Nadine out the corner of her eye, and breaks her neck.

 

* * *

  

Sully, bless him, pulls a wonderful little device out from underneath his table.

“This is a prototype of a device that theoretically hijacks an Alpha’s connection with the Omega,” he explains, setting the device down and puffing at his cigar. “If you find an Alpha, the device can help locate the Omega. It’s called a transponder.”

Nadine’s jaw clenches, accusing in her glare. “I asked you about this the first time we were here and you said it wasn’t important.”

“That’s because this is a shitty prototype of something important,” he says, waving it around carelessly and tapping it against the table a couple times to demonstrate his point. “It’s useless. I can’t get it right.”

“Well, what do you need?” she asks.

“Even if you got me all the right equipment, I wouldn’t have it done in time before you two are dropped off onto the beach. A working version of this device exists, though. It’s in the Ministry of Defense, locked in General Flynn’s safe.”

Chloe pulls a face. “Oh, he’s an arse.”

“Tell me about it,” he huffs. “He had me sent here because he thought my theories were bullshit. It's a miracle I didn’t get sent to the goddamn psych ward.”

“So we just need to get the transponder thing and find an Alpha?”

Sully scoffs at her. “Good luck with that.”

Nadine, who has stayed very quiet for a while, finally plucks the transponder out of Sully’s hands. “Can’t we just use it on her?”

He hums thoughtfully and turns to appraise Chloe. “It could work.”

“Then all we need to do is take the original device off Flynn’s hands.” She smiles, cynical. “Gee, I’ve missed dying normally like in car accidents or getting court-martialed.”

She is not so enthused when Nadine presses a button and five rows of five spiky prongs shoot out from the flat surface on the transponder.

 

* * *

  

She hasn’t stood by a building in so long, barring the ones in Heathrow and the cabin, seeing them now seems strange.

Nadine grimaces when they screech to a stop a block away from the Ministry of Defense, coming face-to-face with a recruitment poster.

She’s almost forgotten that they were both war icons. She’d woken up so many times seeing the same old bus, those  _FULL METAL BITCH_  advertisements were just part of the ambience now.

Chloe huffs a laugh. “You must’ve felt awkward posing for that.”

“Ja,” Nadine mutters. “Thank god all I had to do was glare at everything.”

“Ross the Riveter,” she says because she’s been waiting to say that since the last time she’d been in London.

“Shut up.” Nadine snorts and jerks a thumb at a poster of Chloe. “You too.”

Chloe grins. “I think I look quite nice in that picture.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“And dashing.”

Nadine doesn’t say anything.

They don’t even make it up the steps before someone recognizes Nadine. They’re refused at the door and have just rounded the corner when Nadine resets her.

 

* * *

 

It takes Chloe an embarrassing amount of resets to remember how to infiltrate the Ministry without any major hiccups.

 

* * *

  

The jeep they always steal from the base has a K-pop CD in it. Before the war, she never saw the appeal and she still doesn't, so she keeps it on mute. Plus, it gives her an excuse to start a conversation.

“Why do you care so much about this war?”

Nadine looks at her, disbelievingly. “This is the apocalypse and you’re asking me why I’m fighting to survive it.”

“Well. Exactly.” Chloe’s told her side of the story too many times to count, so she doesn’t offer it.

Pursing her lips, Nadine stares out the window and laces her fingers in her lap.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“I know.”

Chloe hums in acknowledgement.

“My father ran a paramilitary company and I was going to take over. I was prepared for everything, hell, I even had a job lined up for when I took the reins before he announced he would be stepping down. Long story short, the Mimics invaded while we were all in Italy meeting with the client and a strain of them attacked. No one except me survived.”

“I’m sorry.”

Nadine smiles, blankly. “Kill the Omega. That’s all I want.”

Chloe comes to a stop across the street from the Ministry.

“Is that what the tattoo on your back is for?”

Nadine unbuckles her seatbelt and meets Chloe’s eyes. She doesn’t say anything for a while, probably figuring out how Chloe knows about the tattoo and considering whether or not she should tell her.

Finally, she nods once. “It’s the logo. I designed it myself as a child.”

“He must have been proud of you.”

Nadine exhales quietly. “Thank you,” she says, tersely, as she opens the door and slides out the passenger seat.

Chloe waits for her to round the front before she gets out, offering an arm for Nadine to take.

“Stand by me, everyone recognizes you.”

“And you?”

“You’re the Angel of Verdun. I’m just the chick who sells your brand.”

Nadine wrinkles her nose at the moniker, then sighs and shrugs. “Okay.”

 

* * *

  

On the steps, Nadine shoots her in the head with her back turned while wrestling three other guys.

 

* * *

  

Chloe feels right at home in the driver’s seat of a stolen Jeep, swerving to avoid gunfire. No Mimics, no exoskeleton.

Nadine rolls her window down and shoots bullets one after the other in quick succession.

In another life, they would’ve made an excellent team in the treasure hunting business.

They screech into a tunnel, completely empty and dark. She takes a deep breath, screwing her eyes shut, and stabs herself in the leg with the transponder.

She’s died countless times in countless different ways, what’s a little pain along the way.

This time, she does not die.

 

* * *

  

She didn’t think that her first time in Paris would have to be for the express purpose of stopping the alien invasion plaguing her home planet and saving the whole of humanity. She won't even get to see the Eiffel Tower with all the lights on.

 

* * *

 

No more resets. She wakes up without the bruise on her face for the first time in a long, long time. There are bruises elsewhere and 25 tiny holes in her leg, but nothing on her face, so she knows instantly that she’s done.

She’s cuffed to a hospital bed, but what kind of treasure hunter doesn’t know how to escape these things.

She’s up and out in thirty seconds flat. It’s busy outside, but she manages to duck into another room without being seen and finds a spare pile of uniforms which she changes into. If no one looks too closely, she can get around the hospital without getting stopped.

It turns out she doesn’t need to look very far anyway. Down the hall, Nadine’s jerking at her own restraints.

Chloe sneaks in, finger over her lips, and crouches down to release her.

“Come on, Sergeant, I was out of these just like that.” She clicks her fingers.

Nadine brushes by Chloe before she can say anything more.

She opens the door and promptly punches someone in the face. They go down like a sack of bricks. She liberates him of his gun and cocks it at Chloe.

“Whoa!” She ducks away, behind the cot. “No, wait! Wait! It’s gone. They gave me blood. I’m out.”

“Fuck.” Nadine curses, tucking the gun into her waistband.

“Sorry, love.”

She opens the door wider, waiting for Chloe to catch up. “Just get me out of these scrubs.”

 

* * *

  

It’s night out when they return to base, sticking to the shadows.

Nadine thumps her head against the wall of the mess hall, glaring at the sky. “We need men and a carrier. I’ve probably been stripped of rank.”

Chloe is unused to this feeling of uncertainty. Death means something again, and she’s not sure she likes the feeling.

On one hand, she only needs to die one more time in her lifetime. On the other, she’s not excited at the prospect of failing and wasting her only death in a futile attempt to kill the Omega.

“ _Hey_!”

Chloe jerks up.

A pair of ticked off J squadron members find her. Cutter and Sam, specifically.

“Hey, asshole!” Cutter spits out, storming closer.

She meets Nadine’s eyes, smiling brightly. “I found our soldiers.”

It isn’t really hard to convince Sam to join up. Cutter is quick to follow after, and then the rest of squadron J.

Sully lets them into the largest hangar, settled into the outskirts of Heathrow. They hijack a carrier and hitch a bumpy ride to the Louvre.

They’re shot down about five kilometres away from the building, losing a man in the crash.

The Mimics aren’t here yet. There’s a whole army of those things between them and the Louvre, and the odds look like they might just be in the favour of the Mimics.

Chloe’s survived worse, though.

She tosses Sam a reload pack and holds an arm out in Nadine’s direction. They’re both in full suit, so the metal of their fists clink together when they meet. “I don’t plan to die while this thing’s still alive.”

Cutter grins, activating his machine guns. “Makes two of us.”

“We need to get back in the carrier, then.” Nadine hikes one boot up onto the front of a beaten SUV and, in a single swift movement, kicks it three meters away from the front of the carrier. “We don’t need to fly all the way in. Just closer.”

Sam narrows his eyes at the swarm, trying to scope out how far they are. “I think I need a goddamn smoke.”

They clear the path for the carrier, mostly in silence save for the banging of their suits against the hoods of old cars.

This time, Nadine takes the wheel, because Chloe never learned how to pilot in any of her repeats. Cutter and Sam hop onto the carrier while the rest of squadron J decide to stick back to buy them time.

When they get to the Louvre, it’s only her and Nadine left.

It’s always down to the two of them, it seems. It's fitting.

The Louvre is completely submerged in water, so visibility is low. However, the glowing blue of an Alpha is impossible to miss.

They’re stooped against a wall. Chloe peers around the corner, reloading her gun. “I’ll draw it away, you find the Omega and blow it to bits.”

Nadine shakes her head, unfastening the strap on her chest and pushing the grenades into Chloe’s hands.

“I’ve got it.” She pats the ammunitions tucked into compartments on her chest. “I’ll last longer.”

“Claymore mines,” Chloe says, tracing the rectangular outlines on Nadine’s front.

Nadine slips one out and smiles, kneeling in front of Chloe. “Claymore mines.”

Before she can stand and leave, Chloe reaches out, gripping her by the front of her vest. “Nadine.” She halts. “Good luck.”

Nadine blinks, mouth opening slightly, then, she inhales sharply and nods like she’s made up her mind about something. She surges forwards to connect their lips in a bruising kiss. 

Chloe barely gets to put her hands on Nadine’s face when she pulls back, her hands left devastatingly empty. Oh, how it hurts to know this is the first and last kiss she’ll get.

“You’re a good woman, Chloe,” Nadine says.

“You too,” she replies.

Then, Nadine scoops up a piece of the helicopter blade snapped off the top of the carrier and hefts it over her shoulder. It’s like in her posters, wide stance and all, except she’s smiling this time and her eyes shine a dull blue in the dark, crinkled at the edges.

“See you on the other side.”

Chloe thinks she is strikingly and tragically beautiful.

 

* * *

 

One, two, three, four, five pins yanked out of five grenades.

The Alpha screeches through the water. If it’s here, then Nadine’s gone.

She’s drowning again.

 

* * *

  

She wakes up.

The ranking on her uniform tells her she’s a Major. Her face isn't bruised and, when she glances at her reflection in the window, looks clean.

The Thames is below her, the bridge intact.

When she lands, she ignores all her orders and finds the convenience store by the bridge.

Meenu flips through a magazine. Like before, she gives her a free pack of Marlboros, but she leaves the beer behind.

There’s a jeep parked in front of the Ministry of Defense which she hotwires before anyone notices and slams the accelerator until she gets to Heathrow.

She finds squadron J first, dragging a blanket over their game of Black Jack before the Master Sergeant busts them for gambling. Then, she throws the Marlboros to Sam in exchange for a phone call to Nate.

The good news has spread fast. The Mimics are weakened, unable to fight in any effective way. He and Elena will return home within the year. She calls her mum too, shamelessly using Sam’s credit.

When she’s tied up all the loose ends she can remember except one, she finds the training hangar.

“Sergeant Ross,” she calls.

Nadine looks over, arms steady as she pushes herself up, as Chloe weaves around the training bots. She could do it with her eyes closed at this point.

When they’re face to face, Nadine tilts her head, eyes calculating, and asks in a demanding way that Chloe’s come to expect of her, “Who the hell are you?”

Chloe grins.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> pls pls comment any constructive criticisms or if u liked it idk sfjdsmfjdksk i havent edited this At All so
> 
> my tumblr is @chlodines
> 
> edit (14/06): i edited this on my phone but didnt realize autocorrect and ao3 didnt mesh well w/ each other so i edited everything AGAIN but exasperatedly so let me kno if u catch any more typos or parts that make no sense


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